Three Hillsboro City Council candidates and two sitting councilors face renewed scrutiny over their responses to the Aug. 8 confrontation with state Sen. Janeen Sollman.
Beaverton resident Mike Leopold, writing in the Beaverton Valley Times on Oct. 14, named council candidates Dorian Russell, Karim Delgado and Diana Jackson, along with councilors Kipperlyn Sinclair and Olivia Alcaire. Leopold's opinion piece accused them of failing to condemn the incident and argued their statements amounted to a normalization of political extremism.
Pedro Garcia-Balderrama, 28, of Cornelius pleaded guilty Oct. 1 to second-degree disorderly conduct for disrupting the Forest Grove forum and grabbing Sollman's glasses off her face, according to the Washington County District Attorney's Office. A judge sentenced him to two years of supervised probation, anger management and a no-contact order with Sollman, OPB reported.
The three candidates had co-authored an Aug. 19 op-ed in the Hillsboro News Times questioning the response to the incident. In it, they wrote that "many in our community see Sollman's and other's reactive actions following the Aug. 8 event as a continuation of white supremacy."
They also asked whether the solution was "arrest and harassment charges of yet another brown person who grew tired of bureaucracy and screaming into the void with no result."
Russell, Delgado and Jackson are running in separate ward races for three open seats on the seven-member council. All three are part of a progressive slate endorsed by the Washington County Democratic Party, according to The Oregonian.
Sinclair and Alcaire took a different but parallel stance. Mayor Beach Pace and four other councilors posted a joint statement on social media Aug. 10 condemning the confrontation. Sinclair and Alcaire issued a letter to the mayor declining to sign, according to the Hillsboro Herald.
"We find it highly premature that a swift statement was released to the press against an underserved resident, prior to due process," Sinclair and Alcaire wrote in the Aug. 10 letter. They added that when an elected official publicly condemns "a vulnerable individual before due process has fully played out, it appears politically charged rather than rooted in a pursuit of safety."
Sinclair is not seeking reelection to the council. She is running for the District 4 seat on the Washington County Board of Commissioners, according to Hillsboro News Times candidate filings. Alcaire is term-limited.
The candidates' op-ed framed the broader response to the incident as ignoring systemic harm to marginalized communities. Leopold's opinion piece countered that sympathy with a person's identity "should have no bearing on how we respond to threatening, intimidating or physically aggressive behavior against others."
Garcia-Balderrama was initially charged with harassment and disorderly conduct. The harassment charge was dismissed Oct. 1 as part of the plea agreement, court records show.
Washington County began mailing ballots Oct. 14. Ballots must be postmarked or dropped at an official site by 8 p.m. Nov. 3.
